by Fiona Gibson
The past few months have been terrible. Today’s meeting counts as one of the worst experiences of my life. But now this small, scruffy dog has shown up out of nowhere, and he’s caused something to flicker inside me.
It’s a tiny glimmer of hope.
Chapter Five
Ricky
‘Dad, please calm down. Getting upset won’t help anything.’
‘Why should I calm down?’ he thunders. ‘She comes up here, lords it all over us, goes on about how bloody sorry she is—’
‘I know, you’re absolutely right. It’s awful.’ I am pacing about, phone pressed to my ear, in the hallway of my Glasgow flat. It’s half ten and it’s unheard of for my father to call me so late. While not drunk exactly, I can tell he’s had a few.
‘God knows what’s going to happen to everyone now.’ He exhales forcefully.
‘I know, Dad. I know.’
‘… in her high heels, clopping about like lady bloody muck—’
‘It’s terrible, but try not to get worked up about it. It’s probably best to try and move on from it now you’ve—’
‘Been sacked,’ he says bluntly. ‘Slung out on my ear.’
‘Left, Dad. You resigned, didn’t you?’
‘No choice really. If I hadn’t, I’d have been pushed. You know how things were going. Sod the bloody pair of them.’
I catch Meg’s eye as she curls up on the sofa. She came over to my place straight from work after a full day of back-to-back appointments at her own alternative therapy practice. I’d just got home too, having picked up Arthur from after-school club as I had an after-hours group myself today.
At ten years old my son has reached the stage where he’s distinctly unkeen that his school has been added to my rota, although he’s fully aware that peripatetic music teachers don’t get to choose where they teach. In the state system we’re given our allocation of schools to visit, and that’s that. We can’t say, ‘Sorry, my son finds me a bit of an embarrassment. D’you mind if I skip Corrybank Primary?’ He was still a bit huffy when we got home, but I cheered him up with his favourite sausages and crinkle-cut oven chips, which he squirted liberally with ketchup from our plastic tomato-shaped dispenser and shovelled down as if stoking a steam locomotive. Meanwhile I made a prawn risotto for Meg and me (Arthur would never classify a ‘pile of rice’ – as he terms my girlfriend-pleasing speciality – as a proper dinner, and Meg would never ingest an oven chip).
I realise my mind has wandered as Dad reiterates, angrily, what ‘that damn woman’ said at the distillery meeting today.
‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go,’ I offer.
‘I just wanted to know what was happening,’ he snaps; then, as if catching himself, he adds, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, son.’ I’m forty-nine years old and he still calls me son. ‘It just got to me a bit today,’ he adds.
‘I know, Dad, and it’s fine. Of course you’re upset.’
‘Not your fault, though, is it?’ This twists my gut a little. It’s so unlike Dad to apologise. I’m used to his gruff manner, so typical of the older men on the island. He’s worked hard all his life, keeping his house and garden together and driving all over Sgadansay, delivering groceries to elderly people when the weather’s particularly bad. Which, frankly, is a lot of the time out there.
‘Got to look after the old folk,’ Dad always says, as if he’s a spring chicken himself when he’s actually seventy-eight. Yet as far as I’m aware, there’s never been a word of self-pity or dissatisfaction out of him, ever – not until he was pretty much forced out of his job. There hadn’t been so much as a moan out of him when he was looking after Mum, who had emphysema, or when she died a decade ago. More recently, the whole island knew he was devastated when his beloved collie died peacefully in her sleep last year. But Dad wouldn’t acknowledge that he missed their daily walks, even though he and Bess had been inseparable. Arthur was so upset, I guess he cried enough tears for both of them.
‘Shall we come up, Dad?’ I suggest. ‘Me and Arthur, I mean?’ Meg gets up from the sofa in her faintly equine way and strolls past me to the kitchen.
‘But you’ve only just been here,’ he remarks.
‘Well, yes, but we could come again, if you’re feeling a bit—’
‘I’m fine!’ he exclaims. ‘You’re coming in the Easter holidays, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, but that’s still weeks away. How about we head up on Friday straight after work?’
‘Oh, there’s no need for that. You’d never make the last ferry anyway.’
‘Well, I could fly—’
‘What for?’ he gasps.
I can’t help smiling at that. ‘To see you of course. To check you’re okay—’
‘You’d fly up from Glasgow?’ he splutters.
‘Yes, of course.’ That is where I live, after all …
‘But it’s a fortune!’ The very thought of this seems to agitate him even more than the distillery woman. Dad’s frugality knows no bounds. I feared that he’d have a coronary when I once let slip that I’d put the oven on solely to bake a jacket potato.
‘Well, yeah, but I’m happy to come,’ I tell him.
‘No, that’s just crazy,’ he says firmly. ‘Like we said, I’ll see you in the Easter holidays.’
‘Okay,’ I concede. ‘But you do remember Arthur’s not coming this time, don’t you? He’s being whisked off by his mate’s family to Alicante—’
‘Of course I remember. I might’ve been given the shove, but I’m not senile, son.’
‘I know that, Dad.’ Would I dare to suggest that he’s less than fully in control of his faculties? ‘So it’ll just be me and Meg,’ I add. ‘She’s really looking forward to meeting you, Dad.’
‘Aye, I’m looking forward to it too,’ he concedes, and just as I’m thinking, that’s better, I hope he’s planning to dial down the grumpiness when we visit, he adds, ‘but she’ll have to take me as she finds me.’
For crying out loud, how else would she take him? She’s hardly expecting a home cinema or an infinity pool. ‘Yes, of course she will,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s going to be great.’
I find Meg in the kitchen, about to make her special tea. She keeps a Kilner jar of it here, and another containing her toasted coconut granola. ‘Meg’s gravel,’ as Arthur jokingly calls it, preferring Coco Pops himself (which she finds repellent). The appearance of these jars a few months ago seemed to mark a significant shift in our relationship.
With her own wooden scoop, she transfers hibiscus flowers to the teapot and sloshes in boiling water. She grows and dries these flowers herself, in window boxes, supplying upmarket delis across the posher part of the city where she lives. I’d never have imagined such an enterprise could make her a little extra money, but it does, although she’s admitted she doesn’t really need it. Apparently, her therapy practice is thriving. She just does it for the enjoyment and loves cycling about with her wicker basket full of cellophane packets of petals. Plus, it’s all great ‘content’, as she calls it, for her Instagram.
‘Sounds like Dad had a shitty day,’ I tell her.
‘So I gathered,’ she says. ‘It’s really awful, what’s happened up there. But maybe it’s for the best …’ She pours her pinkish tea.
‘In what way?’ I ask.
She blows across the rim of the pale blue mug she brought from her own place, having deemed my selection unacceptable. She requires a fine porcelain one with a white interior: not too big, she insists, because she ‘can’t get with this thing of drinking tea from a bucket’; and any other colour of interior and she literally can’t drink from it. ‘Well, he’s quite old to be working full-time, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, but it was his whole life really. I don’t know what he’s going to do with himself now.’
Meg pulls a sympathetic face. ‘Maybe it’ll just take him a bit of time to adjust.’
‘I guess so,’ I concede. When Meg and I met in a coffee shop just over a year ago, I couldn’
t believe this natural beauty was interested in me – although she says I was hard to miss as I was carrying a double bass at the time. When she’d started quizzing me about it, then asked if she could share a table with ‘the two of you’ (i.e. me and the bass) I thought she might be working up to asking about lessons.
‘I hope I’m not playing gooseberry,’ she remarked, glancing from me to the bass and back to me again.
‘No, not at all,’ I said.
‘D’you normally hang out together,’ she teased, ‘in coffee shops?’
‘Not usually,’ I replied. ‘But I’ve just picked it up from being repaired and it’s so cold out there …’
‘Aw, doesn’t its case have a sheepskin lining?’ My God, I thought, as her blue eyes kind of danced as she laughed, this woman might just possibly be flirting with me. I’d meant I’d wanted a coffee to warm myself up.
Bar a few short-lived relationships, I’d been pretty much single since Arthur was six, when the terrible stuff happened with his mum, stuff I don’t like to think about, even now. For the first year or so without Katy it was all I could do to look after him and keep things together at home. I took some time off work, but as my meagre savings dwindled I had to ease my way back into teaching, first with private lessons and then back in schools. We needed money, after all. The years rolled on, and the women I met usually came to the conclusion that I was ‘distant’ and ‘impossible to get close to’. They said they understood why but, of course, I was hardly brilliant boyfriend material.
Looking back, I realise a couple of these women viewed me as someone to be rescued – but the last thing I wanted was to ‘talk about things’ and rake over what had happened with Katy. Arthur had adored his mum. As a toddler he’d roared in protest if she so much as went to the loo. Mostly, Katy didn’t mind, but occasionally she’d explode. ‘You’re like a parasite!’ she yelled once, and literally fled from him, out of our flat, banging the door behind her. Arthur cried and cried.
As he grew older, he’d beg her to bake or paint pictures with him, and on the rare occasions when she agreed, he’d literally radiate happiness. So he certainly didn’t want a replacement mother figure, and I know a couple of women were hurt when he seemed less than enthralled by their presents: the dinosaur T-shirt, the invisible ink pen, the Batman outfit that didn’t quite hit the right note.
My last girlfriend, Paula, went all out to be Arthur’s mate, constantly trying to haul him out to the park when he just wanted to lie on the sofa. One time she tried to teach him dance routines (not Arthur’s scene at all). Then she persuaded a friend to dress up as Santa and show up at our flat on a ‘special visit’, long after Arthur had stopped believing that his presents came from a workshop in Lapland. My mortified son tried to look pleased, but lacked the acting skills and ‘Santa’ shuffled off into the rain like a rebuffed door-to-door salesman.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Paula exclaimed, when he’d politely declined a trip to the trampolining centre with her. Nothing, I wanted to say. Just leave him be. But she was trying so hard; she was a good, kind person and the whole thing made me exasperated with him, and also deeply, deeply sad. ‘You can’t say I didn’t fucking try,’ was her parting shot when we broke up.
Was I failing as a father? Or was I one of those men who’s just useless at relationships? My track record suggested that might be the case, and for a long time I stopped seeing anyone at all. As women weren’t exactly beating a path to my door, it wasn’t difficult to remain single. I mean, it’s not as if I had to build an electrified fence to keep them at bay. I was barely ‘alone’ anyway, having Arthur and a full work timetable, which had become more and more crazy over the years as budgets had been cut and there were fewer teachers to cover all the schools. So I was doing fine on my own, keeping things simple, with as few complications as possible.
Then along came Meg, and she didn’t seem like a complication at all.
There was a sheen of self-assuredness about her that I found extremely attractive, and before I knew it an hour had drifted by in that coffee shop. ‘D’you fancy a drink sometime?’ she’d asked as we left.
Bloody hell! Of course I fancied a drink! ‘That’d be lovely,’ I said. We exchanged numbers and off I went, the double bass suddenly seeming like no burden at all, no more troublesome than a penny whistle.
As we started seeing each other, it became clear that Meg didn’t view herself as my ‘rescuer’, even as details emerged about my past. She was sympathetic, but we didn’t dwell upon anything, which suited me fine. And incredibly, Arthur seemed to like her – perhaps because, while friendly and sweet with him, she didn’t go overboard on trying to be his best mate, which seemed like the perfect way to go about things. Clearly focused on her business, she had never wanted children. She didn’t seem overly concerned about being my best mate either; from the off, there was a sense of aloofness emanating from her, and I figured that she was just used to doing her own thing. I meant it positively when I described her to friends as ‘really driven and independent’. And when my friend Brenna asked, ‘So, are you in love then, Ricky?’ I blustered, ‘She’s fantastic, yeah.’ Which I guess didn’t really answer her question.
‘This might be a bit controversial,’ Meg says now, still clutching her mug, ‘but your dad could retire, couldn’t he? I mean, that’s what people do, isn’t it?’
‘They do,’ I say, ‘but unfortunately he’s not the retiring type.’
Meg shrugs. ‘Could he take up a new hobby then?’
I can’t help smiling at this. Again, I find myself wondering what Meg and my father will make of each other when they meet in the Easter holidays. Like me, Meg is an only child, but there our similarities end. She was brought up in one of the smartest suburbs of Glasgow – where her affluent parents still live – and she enjoys treating herself to luxury yoga retreats on the Greek islands. Obviously, staying in a little terraced cottage with no central heating on a Hebridean island will be a little different. I have been to Skye, you know, she’s reminded me. I’m not a complete urbanite. Yes, but she stayed in a boutique hotel and dined at a Michelin-starred restaurant. And Sgadansay is way smaller than Skye, with less than a quarter of the population. It’s not quite ‘everyone knows each other’ territory, but most people do, at least by sight.
‘He’s not really the hobby type either,’ I tell her.
‘What about his garden?’ she asks. ‘Does he grow vegetables?’
‘Just potatoes. Unfortunately that’s the only vegetable he’ll tolerate.’
Meg laughs dryly. ‘I can see where Arthur gets it from then.’ I decide to let this go. She’s made it clear that she thinks I’m too easy-going with Arthur’s meals, with my willingness to dish up oven chips and the fact that I have given up nagging him to eat salad. ‘Could your dad get another dog?’ she suggests. ‘Didn’t you say he adored his collie?’
I shake my head. ‘I’ve suggested that. He said he’d never have another one after Bess. He wouldn’t admit it, because he’ll never admit to having any emotions at all, really – but I don’t think he could stand the idea of losing a dog again.’
Meg sighs. ‘Okay, I can understand that. But there must be something he could get into.’
‘Honestly, I can’t think of anything.’
‘How about chickens?’
I splutter with laughter.
‘I’m serious, Ricky! Why not? He’d have eggs—’
‘He’s not a chicken-keeping kind of guy, trust me.’
‘What about pigeons then?’ she suggests.
‘Why would he want pigeons?’ I ask, genuinely baffled by this.
‘Well, it’s a thing, isn’t it, with older men? Racing them, I mean. Our gardener was into it …’
‘Your gardener?’ I repeat with a grin.
‘Yeah.’ She shrugs dismissively. ‘He was mad about his birds. He’d get some bloke to drive them to Penzance or something and release them and they’d fly all the way home to Glasgow—’
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br /> ‘Yeah, that’s it! That’d take his mind off his job.’ Despite the bleakness of my conversation with Dad, I’m chuckling now.
‘I’m serious, Ricky,’ Meg insists. ‘When people lose their jobs they need something to give them a sense of purpose and structure.’
‘How did your parents manage, when they retired?’ I ask with genuine interest. I know her dad was something pretty high up in book publishing and her mother ran an actors’ agency.
‘Mum set up her little catering thing,’ she reminds me. ‘You know – the grazing tables she does.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She’s mentioned this, and described it as a kind of modern take on the party buffet. I gather it’s somewhat more evolved than cheese cubes and chipolatas on sticks.
‘And they went into party overload,’ she adds with a grin. ‘Barbecues, dinner parties – they’re busier than ever these days.’
I think about Dad, whose idea of socialising is pretty much limited to a few pints at the Anchor.
‘It’s important to stay connected to people,’ she adds. ‘Otherwise it can really take a toll on their mental health, you know?’ Suddenly, I don’t like the way this conversation is going. ‘You should suggest something,’ she adds. ‘Go on – suggest pigeon racing …’
I snigger as I start to load the dishwasher. ‘Dad’s barely left the island in years. I can’t imagine him driving all the way down to Cornwall with some birds in a cage—’
‘No, someone else drives them.’
‘So what would Dad do then?’
She shrugs. ‘Sit and wait for them to come home!’
‘Like they’re wayward teenagers out on the lash? He’d be no more likely to join the quilters’ society.’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘Or crochet a hammock,’ I add. ‘Maybe that’s what he should start doing? Get one of the neighbours to teach him to crochet and then—’
‘Granddad’s learning to crochet?’ Arthur grins at me from the doorway.